
README: Replicating "The Saliency of the CEO Pay Ratio" Paper

This README provides instructions and resources to replicate the results from the paper "The Saliency of the CEO Pay Ratio" by A. Boone, A. Starkweather, and J. White, forthcoming in the Review of Finance (Oct 2023).

Replication Code

The primary code to replicate the results is "MasterCode.do". This code produces the tables and figures from the paper, executing other scripts located in the Code folder as sub-programs.

Data Dictionary
To understand the variables used, refer to the data dictionary named "Data Dictionary.xlsx".

Log File
The log file, named "payratio_RF.smcl", contains a comprehensive record of all Stata commands and the respective regression outputs generated by the master code.

Data File Format
A demonstration of the data format can be found in the "dataset_main_pseudo.dta" file, compatible with Stata v.15.

Data Sources and Permissions
It is important to note that certain data used in this paper were obtained from third-party providers such as Equilar, Glassdoor, CRSP, Thomson Reuters, Compustat, Execucomp, Capital IQ, MSCI GMI, ProQuest, and Bloomberg. These datasets were accessed either through licenses or permissions. Our institutions have acquired access rights but do not possess ownership of the data. Sharing of this data requires explicit written consent from the respective third-party providers.

Other datasets are derived from publicly available sources, including:

US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs)
Bureau of Labor and Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (https://www.bls.gov/cew/)
Workplace Fairness (https://www.workplacefairness.org/unions-right-to-work-laws/)
Good Jobs First’s Violation Tracker (https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/)

Textual data from this paper, sourced from public SEC filings, can be made available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.

Contact
For additional queries or to request data, please contact the corresponding author of the paper: Josh White, Vanderbilt University, Owen Graduate School of Management, josh.white@vanderbilt.edu.